1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus that performs predetermined processing for input image data, an image processing method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has conventionally been known a photographing method for blurring a background by focusing on a main object when photographing is carried out by a digital camera. This photographing method enables acquisition of an image of a dreamy effect by blurring a point light source to generate a circular bokeh in a portion corresponding to the point light source. Such a circular bokeh is generated by characteristics of a lens of the digital camera. The point light source is a region where there is local light of a certain size. Bokeh is a term of art commonly used to describe the aesthetic quality of a blur in out of focus areas of images.
There are known methods for fetching image data and processing it into an image where a circular bokeh has seemingly been generated (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2009-003858 and 2009-218704).
When a point light source is processed by image processing as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2009-003858 and 2009-218704, the point light source is required to be detected as a premise.
When an image is captured by a digital camera, how the point light source is seen greatly varies from one photographing condition to another. For example, between the case of capturing a nightscape and the case of photographing under daylight, characteristics of a difference of brightness between the point light source and other regions are different.
However, since the methods discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2009-003858 and 2009-218704 process the point light source without taking into consideration any characteristics of an image to be processed based on the photographing conditions, there is a possibility that the point light source may not be appropriately processed.